


Rope

by Margo_Kim



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: M/M, Rope Bondage, Self-Harm, Touching, Trauma, Trust Issues, marcus keane's sad life, touch issues, unfortunately less sexy and more sad than I intended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 06:36:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: Tomas swallows. And Marcus fears he'll stop again, that he'll say for the tenth time that Marcus can stop this whenever he wants, that Tomas doesn't want to make him uncomfortable, that if Marcus flinches away, then Tomas won't force himself on him, that Tomas will never force himself on him, that Tomas could live his entire life with Marcus as he did before, honoring the vows he's already broken. He broke them with Jessica, who could touch and be touched. Tomas doesn't say this. He says, "You seem secure to me."





	Rope

**Author's Note:**

> shhhhhh I'm not here I'm studying for a test and writing nothing obviously except clinical reflection on my medical experiences in the hospital shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Marcus' ankles are tied down. No way to fake that, no way to stop himself from curling in without the rope and knot. Tomas ties him down like a reminder—Marcus could kick loose if he tried, if Tomas did not tell him to stop. He doesn't know whether Tomas knows that. Tomas is not good enough with rope yet to know the different holds, still learning how to turn some cloth into a bind as awful and inescapable as God's love.

He won't tie Marcus' hands. He ties the rope to the bedposts and puts the rope in Marcus' hand. Marcus clings to them as to let go is to fall away. "There," Tomas rasps.

"Leaving the job half done," Marcus says. The words come out as shakily as he feared. "My hands are free."

"Then move them," says Tomas.

Marcus stays where he is. He doesn't move, except to tighten his grip.

Tomas swallows. And Marcus fears he'll stop again, that he'll say for the tenth time that Marcus can stop this whenever he wants, that Tomas doesn't want to make him uncomfortable, that if Marcus flinches away, then Tomas won't force himself on him, that Tomas will never force himself on him, that Tomas could live his entire life with Marcus as he did before, honoring the vows he's already broken. He broke them with Jessica, who could touch and be touched. Tomas doesn't say this. He says, "You seem secure to me."

Marcus doesn't say anything. His throat feels like it's swollen up. Tomas kneels on the bed and looms. They are both dressed and undressed, covered and uncovered. Jeans and undershirts. Too naked and not naked enough. Tomas' hand raises and hovers over Marcus' stomach. Marcus stops breathing.

Tell me you want this, Tomas had moaned in his ear three weeks ago, the first time they fell together into bed. And when Marcus had frozen, his hands spasming on Tomas's back before clenching the shirt too tight, Tomas asked again, and when Marcus didn't reply, Tomas pulled away and said, Marcus. He'd reached out to touch Marcus' face, as they'd touched each other so often. But those touches had been before the kiss, before Marcus' back shoved up against the motel room door and Tomas' hands so sure, so steady on his belt. Tomas, who wanted and wanted and did not falter. In bed, he touched Marcus' face, and Marcus' head snapped away, as if slapped. They did not touch that night after that. Marcus wrapped himself in a blanket and sat on the floor. Tomas sat beside him, but not touching him. Marcus shook for hours, and Tomas said, "We never have to. If you don't want to. I love you, whatever we do."

Tomas meant the words as a comfort. Marcus was tired of being a sacrifice.

Here, now, a different bed, a different night, Tomas brings his hand feather soft against Marcus' stomach, pulled as flutteringly taut as a drum. Marcus closes his eyes. His hands gripp the rope tighter. He knows Tomas will be watching his hands. If he lets go, Tomas will stop. If he drops them and pushes Tomas away, Tomas will go. Marcus had told Tomas to do whatever he wanted unless Marcus told him to stop. Consent in absentia. Consent by what is not forbidden.

"Breathe," Tomas says and pushes down just a little. Air squeezes out of Marcus' lungs. He drags it back in again. Tomas' touch works Marcus like a bellow. He does not ask if Marcus wishes to breathe. Tomas wishes Marcus to breathe, and that's enough.

Marcus has a guess as to what healthy is supposed to look like, suspects this isn't it. Three weeks of no touching, none, of flinching away from even the chaste nothing touch they'd offered each other before, of cursing himself and his weakness, a fear of unkind touch he couldn't untrain like a stupid old guard dog kicked once too often, and Marcus had come to Tomas last night and said, "Do it. Just do it."

"Do what?" Tomas asked, as his eyes flicked down over Marcus' body.

Marcus felt it, the churn of arousal and horror that he knew would disgust Tomas. But there was nothing for it. "It doesn't mean anything when I twitch. Just hold me down, get it over with, and then I won't fuss anymore."

Tomas had said nothing. It didn't upset Marcus. He'd prepared himself for Tomas' refusal. Had known Tomas would likely say no and then stop asking all together, stop wanting all together, and that would be one solution to the problem. He might also say yes, but Marcus tried only to think of that possibility in the shower where the water would carry away his shame.

Tomas said instead, "Do you want me?" with an unreadable face that he could never have managed even six months ago. Demons had taught him at last how to shield his thoughts.

"You want me," Marcus had replied.

"That's not what I asked."

"The answer's the same."

"Is it?" Tomas had asked last night, and tonight Tomas, with his hand sliding down to the hem of the shirt, to the line of skin before the jeans, says, "Oh Marcus. You are so beautiful."

Marcus buries his face in his arm stretched over his head by the rope. Tomas lets him hide. He runs his fingers along the hem of Marcus' shirt. He traces the dip of Marcus' hip. "Gorgeous. Gorgeous." His touch lingers over a scar where someone else might have had their appendix out. It's a crescent looking mess, the skin trying to piece back too much flesh ripped out.

"A--a bite," Marcus says as Tomas's thumb traces the welt. "In my twenties." He couldn't be more precise than that. He'd forgotten most of the things that happened to his body, forgotten or never noticed in the first place. Fussing over wounds was a kind of vanity. Marcus carried too many sins already to add another to the list.

Tomas does not seem to know this. He hooks a finger under Marcus' shirt and tugs it up, just a little. He falters when Marcus stops breathing. Marcus starts again, but Tomas leaves the shirt there, half-pulled up. His fingers circle a new bit of skin exposed, along the line of his rib cage, and the mutilated constellation he finds there. "Burns," Marcus says. Sixteen and angry, hand rolled cigarettes. Hurting himself where the priests won't look. They caught him anyway. Father Sean claimed his room smelt like burnt flesh. Marcus said he wanted to know what the demons felt when the holy water hit them. Father Sean took the lighter. Asked Marcus if he had satisfied his own curiosity yet or if he needed more instruction.

Tomas' thumb worries the edge of the largest burn, the oldest. Marcus can't remember what it looks like. It's been so long since he saw it.

This is fine, he thinks. This is fine.

And then Tomas' hand, his other hand, is on the underside of Marcus' bicep, which Marcus would have known if he was looking, but he's still hiding his face in his arm, his other arm, the one Tomas isn't touching. Marcus doesn't let go of the rope. So Tomas doesn't let go of him. "And these?" he asks. He must know the answer. The scars are too straight to be anything but what they are.

"Cuts. Scissors. Boy's home," Marcus says. And then, "The priests. Wouldn't let me. When they found out. Checked my arms. Said it was weakness. Couldn't allow that in an exorcist." Suicide is a sin. So is defacing the flesh God granted you. That's what the priests said, and they also said it wasn't a sin to be defaced in the name of God. Marcus understood. You had to let someone else hurt you. It was a sin to ask. It was a sin to take. Not a sin to be asked. Not a sin to be taken.

"Jesus," Marcus prays. He still cannot look at Tomas. "Just fuck me."

"No," says Tomas, who Marcus now realizes never intended to.

"Tomas, just fucking do it. Just get it over with." Please, Tomas, Please. It will never be harder than the first time. If Tomas could just hold him down and ride it out, then Marcus would learn. Sex would be a fait accompli. The hardest cut is the first, when you don't know yet what you can take. Once you break the skin, you could cut off your own leg if you needed too.

"I won’t," Tomas says. "Not like this."

"There is only this."

Tomas bends closer. Marcus can feel the bed shift, can feel the heat of Tomas so close against him. Tomas kisses Marcus' jaw. Marcus' hands hurt from clenching. He wants so badly to embrace him. Marcus turns his head instead, eyes still shut, and their mouths bump together. "Please," Marcus whines against Tomas' mouth.

"No," Tomas says and kisses the tip of Marcus' nose. Marcus wants to laugh or sob. He’s not sure which one rips from his throat.

“I do, Tomas,” Marcus tries, the words making him flush.

“Do what?” Tomas asks. His voice is calm, even as his hands on Marcus’ body tremble. How much they terrify each other.

It shouldn’t feel like a secret when he’s so hard it hurts, it shouldn’t feel like the vilest confession to a man who agrees, but Marcus can still barely say it. “I do want you. God, Tomas, I’m scared how much I want you and I don’t know how. I need you—I just need to you _do it_ , please, or I’ll never. I can’t, I can’t—just do what you want, I want it too.”

Tomas lowers himself in bed along the length of Marcus’ body, his neck settling onto Marcus’ aching shoulder. The hand on Marcus’ chest slides up underneath the shirt, comes to stop on Marcus’ heart. “I won’t be a new way you hurt yourself,” Tomas says.

After a long time, so long Marcus fears that Tomas will disbelieve the answer that Marcus exhausted himself discovering, Marcus says, “You aren’t.”

“I think you’re good at hurting yourself.”

Marcus can feel Tomas’ pressed against his side, can feel him as hard as Marcus. He thinks of saying something seductive, whatever a man of the verge of tears may say like that. He thinks of reaching out and grabbing Tomas himself, and letting that take them as it takes them. But he cannot speak. He cannot drop the rope.

Marcus buries his face in Tomas’ hair, and feels the whole length of Tomas’ body shiver closer against him. I’m sorry I want you, I’m sorry you want me, I’m sorry this is what you get, Marcus tries to say without words or movement. Tomas can enter the minds of the possessed. Surely he could enter Marcus’. 

On Marcus’ chest, Tomas’ fingers spread as if he is trying to grasp the heart itself. He either does not hear the apology or does not accept it.

It is a difficult position to fall asleep in, but they manage.

In the morning, Marcus can barely move his arms, and they watch the local news together in silence as Tomas massages life back into them. His fingers dig into tender, mistreated flesh, the kind of pain that lessens pain. When they’re done, when Tomas’ hands still, when they’ve sat on Marcus’ shoulders without purpose for long enough that Marcus thinks he can manage to shrug them off, they pack up their clothes, the room. They don’t kiss. But somehow in the process of coiling up the rope, their hands find each other and entangle, and they stay that way even once the rope’s tucked safely away again. Tomas holds Marcus’ hand, while Marcus’ hand is held. And then as they walk to the car, without any change anyone but they could see, Marcus holds Tomas’ hand right back.


End file.
